WA Post: L.A. — the city of traffic jams — finds a way to get people out of their cars

Los Angeles, of all places, has taken a bold step forward on mass transit.

Few need reminding of the frequent traffic nightmares in L.A., whose soaring cloverleafs and endless traffic jams have been mythologized in film noir, fiction and song. “There are two modes of transport in Los Angeles: car and ambulance,” author Fran Lebowitz said.

Just over a year ago, however, the City of Angels rewrote the script a bit when it partnered with Santa Monica to open the Expo Line, a light-rail train that carries riders from downtown L.A. to its neighboring city and its beaches.

The Expo Line runs parallel to Interstate 10, an infamous highway even for L.A., which has been ranked as having the worst traffic in the world. It’s worse than Moscow, Bangkok, or Mexico City, according to a study by traffic data firm Inrix. It also takes a toll that goes beyond aggravation: in terms of lost productivity and wasted fuel, traffic jams cost the average Los Angeles driver an estimated $2,408 a year.

So you would think that Angelenos would gladly abandon their cars for mass transit to avoid another soul-sucking commute on “the 10” if they had the chance. But, in car-crazed L.A., no one knew for sure.

Then, in May 2016, the Expo Line opened after decades of planning and controversy that threatened to scuttle the project. The $2.43-billion light-rail line – built in two phases and funded substantially by a voter-approved sales tax increase – now travels the 15 miles from Metro Center in downtown L.A. to Santa Monica in about 45 minutes. Trains leave every six to 12 minutes, depending on the time of day. The light-rail line – which is named for Exposition Boulevard, along which it runs – makes 17 stops at destinations such as Culver City, the University of Southern California, La Brea, and Santa Monica College.

The Expo Line –with its cheerful black and yellow cars resembling giant bumble bees — received rave reviews from the start, and recent ridership data attests that its popularity is more than novelty. As of June, estimated ridership on the Expo Line increased 40 percent, from 45,876 passengers last year to more than 64,000 this year — a target it wasn’t expected to reach until 2030, the Santa Monica Lookout reports.

Surveys also show that many of its riders have switched from cars to mass transit. Nearly 70 percent had not been regular users of mass transit before the line opened, according to a survey by Metro, the city’s transportation agency. Of those new riders, more than half had made the trip previously by automobile, either driving alone or, in smaller numbers, carpooling. About six percent said that before the Expo Line, they would have taken a taxi or used a ride-hailing app such as Uber or Lyft. If anything, the Expo Line is almost suffering from too much success: riders already gripe about overcrowding during peak travel times.

Michael Feinstein, who was mayor of Santa Monica during the period when much of the Expo Line was deliberated and decided, said the new mass transit link has made travel easier in the region, as he found during a recent trip for a public hearing at City Hall in Los Angeles.

“In the past, it was a real schlep to attend hearings there,” said Feinstein, who also served on the Santa Monica City Council. “But now, riding the train — and taking my bike with me — makes it a lot easier. I used my transit time on board to review my notes and prepare my testimony. Then, after the train’s last stop, I got on my bike to ride the last several blocks to City Hall. Piece of cake.”

The Expo’s opening also has provided many Angelenos a way to get to Santa Monica’s beaches that hadn’t been available since the demise of the Pacific Electric Red Car Line in the 1950s. The Expo Line is jammed on weekends with surfers (yes, surf boards are allowed on trains), bicyclists (bikes, too) and other beachgoers.

Football fans also are taking advantage of the new transportation link. About 10,000 Los Angeles Rams fans — or upwards of 11 percent of the home crowd —now take the Expo Line to the L.A. Coliseum, The Los Angeles Daily News reports. The line, with two stops near the venue, is not just convenient but cheap: $2.50 per ride, compared with absurdly expensive parking fees of as much as $100 per vehicle.

In light of the success the system’s enjoyed so far, it’s worth noting that the project met a lot of resistance since city planners began pushing for it in the late 1980s. Cost concerns plagued the project, and there was the usual resistance from many Americans who haven’t embraced mass transit the way people in other countries have. At times, the Expo Line also stirred tensions over race, class and turf.

Feinstein said he recalls attending a raucous public forum on the Expo Line during the initial planning where opponents often shouted down the executive director of the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission as he spoke on its behalf. Only the need to find alternatives to the bumper-to-bumper commute on the I-10 kept the project going.

Today, the Expo Line — along with other mass transit improvements such as the Gold Line and a planned light-rail link to Los Angeles International Airport– has become the foundation of an improved regional system of transportation. Thousands of riders are finding shorter commutes. And more plans to expand mass transit are in the works in preparation for the 2028 Olympics.

But the Expo Line also shows the downside of relying too much on light rail for trips across a sprawling metropolis such as Los Angeles. Light rail is cheaper – and therefore easier to get built, especially in the United States – but it’s also slower, often competing with cars on city streets and at traffic stops. Yet, most of Los Angeles’ regional transportation will depend on slower, cheaper light rail instead of heavy rail.

Joe Mathews, a former reporter for the Los Angeles Times and author of California Crackup: How Reform Broke the Golden State and How We Can Fix It, recounted his frustrations after a 25-mile commute aboard the new light-rail lines from Pasadena to Santa Monica took him 2.5 hours to complete, one way.

“In that same time, I could have flown to Las Vegas, played the airport slots, and flown home, jackpot in hand,” Mathews wrote.

In other cities such as Berlin, where I’ve been spending a lot of time lately, the deep public support for mass transit has resulted in a comprehensive network of heavy- and light-rail train lines that transport people the length and breadth of the city in the most efficient and economical way.

Still, the Expo Line is a start. It’s doing what mass transit is supposed to do: getting people out of their cars and off crammed highways into an alternative that’s both economical and environmentally friendly – and in Los Angeles, of all places.

Steven Hill is a freelance journalist and former senior fellow with the New America Foundation.

A provocative, remedy-based perspective on the joint complexities of economic stability and ever expanding technology.–Kirkus Reviews

“Hill hits Silicon Valley darlings like Uber and Airbnb alongside the former online black market Silk Road, right-to-work laws, and factory robots all under the umbrella of “naked capitalism.” He explains how the rise of the “1099 workforce” is not limited to Silicon Valley; more and more traditional jobs in fields like manufacturing are turning to contractors to perform the same tasks full-time employees used to do. In addition to costing workers in benefits and safety nets, misclassifying workers as contractors costs federal and state governments billions of dollars annually in lost tax revenue.” ―Washington Monthly

“For anyone driven crazy by the faux warm and fuzzy PR of the so-called sharing economy Steven Hill’s Raw Deal: How the “Uber Economy” and Runaway Capitalism Are Screwing American Workers should be required reading… Hill is an extremely well-informed skeptic who presents a satisfyingly blistering critique of high tech’s disingenuous equating of sharing with profiteering…Hill includes two chapters listing potential solutions for the crises facing U.S. workers…Hill stresses the need for movement organizing to create a safety net strong enough to save the millions of workers currently being shafted in venture capital’s brave new world.” ―Counterpunch

“A growing underclass scrambling to make ends meet at the whim of increasingly picky and erratic employers, that number could balloon to 65 million within 10 years, or about half of the domestic workforce, warns Steven Hill in his troubling new book, Raw Deal. This brand of worker abuse cuts across industries and company size. Hill calls out Uber, AirBnb, Merck, Nissan, and dozens of others. Hill does a nice job of putting it in starker, easier-to-understand ways.” ―Washington Independent Review of Books

“Steven Hill’s book Raw Deal is a red-faced, steam-out-the-ears indictment of sharing apps. Yet Hill offers a pragmatic, almost post-ideological solution: “individual security accounts” for workers. Companies that use independent contractors, or offer scant benefits for employees, would have to add on a certain percentage of their pay as a contribution to those accounts, which would cover health care, unemployment insurance, and more. There’d be a mechanism ― and a requirement ― for companies to contribute to the long-term well-being even of workers who aren’t on their traditional payrolls.” ―Boston Globe

“Raw Deal is a book for its time. Steven Hill perfectly captures the anxiety of the American worker in today’s increasingly digital economy. Hill presents some compelling ideas, the most important being something he calls the Economic Singularity. In this unfortunate tipping point, the concentration of wealth in the hands of the few results in economic implosion because the 99 percent can’t afford to buy anything the 1 percent has to sell. The United States is turning into a nation of 1099 workers who eke out a living driving cars, renting rooms and running errands for people who apparently have better things to do with their time. Throw in self-thinking computers and obedient robots, and there won’t be any work left for plain old Homo sapiens…Hill proposes that we offer 1099 workers a new safety net consisting of tax deductions, individual security accounts and multiemployer health care plans. All good ideas.” ― San Francisco Chronicle

This book is a must read for those concerned about how technology is disrupting the way we work and eroding the social safety net, and how policy makers should respond to ensure that the growing number of workers in the “gig” economy earn adequate benefits.—Laura D’Andrea Tyson, UC-Berkeley and former Chair of the US President’s Council of Economic Advisers

“Steven Hill’s groundbreaking book on the part-time, unstable ‘Uber Economy’ shows how a new sub-economy becomes a work of law-flouting regress undermining full-time work. Remote corporate algorithms run riot!”— Ralph Nader, consumer advocate

For many years, Steven Hill’s analysis, commentary and activism have helped shape our understanding of the U.S. political economy. His latest book, Raw Deal is A riveting expose that shows with alarming lucidity what Americans stand to lose if we don’t figure out how to rein in the technological giants that are threatening the American Dream.–Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation

In Raw Deal, Steven Hill documents in frightening detail the ways in which new forms of work promise to plunge US workers and their families into further economic hardship, risk-assumption, and instability. Fortunately, Hill does not simply anticipate catastrophe; he closes the book with an informed call for institutional reforms that would lessen the negative consequences of these potentially dangerous forms of work. Anyone concerned with US working conditions – whether American workers, worker advocates, labor market scholars, or policy-makers – must read this book .— Janet C. Gornick, Professor of Political Science and Sociology, Graduate Center, City University of New York, Director, LIS: Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg

Praise for Expand Social Security Now

“Read this book before you vote. Few issues are more important to your personal economic future. Steven Hill shows what’s at stake, and he offers solutions that Americans of all stripes can agree on.”—Robert B. Reich, author of “Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few”

“Steven Hill has written a barn burner of a book. Or perhaps I should say ‘myth buster,’ because he systematically demolishes the false justifications for slashing Social Security. In place of misplaced animus and misleading arguments, he offers a strong case for dramatically expanding America’s most successful domestic program in an age of rising inequality and widespread financial insecurity.”—Jacob S. Hacker, coauthor of “American Amnesia: How the War on Government Led Us to Forget What Made America Prosper”, Professor, Yale University

“Steven Hill has written a vigorous defense of Social Security, the country’s most important social program. While most political debate in recent years has focused on ways to cut Social Security or privatize it, Hill goes in the opposite direction and argues for a robust expansion. Hill proposes a Social Security program that would be adequate by itself to support a middle-class retirement.”—Dean Baker, co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, and author of “Getting Back to Full Employment: A Better Bargain for Working People”

“Steven Hill has produced a dynamite handbook for angry Americans who seek to take back democracy. The true contest is not Republicans versus Democrats. It is the American people versus Washington. And this is the sleeper issue the people can win. The governing elites in both parties are trying to eviscerate Social Security—arguably the most successful and most popular program created by the federal government. Hill explains why the political insiders and their Wall Street patrons are wrong about Social Security. He shows us how to mobilize to defeat the power elites and expand Social Security rather than destroy it.”—William Greider, author of “Come Home, America: The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country”

Praise for Europe’s Promise

Financial Times: “Steven Hill is a lucid and engaging writer. He makes you sit up and think.”

The Economist: “In a new book, Steven Hill extols the European social contract for better government services. Life in Europe is more secure, he argues, and therefore more agreeable.”

Hendrik Hertzberg, The New Yorker: “Like a reverse Alexis de Tocqueville, Steven Hill dauntlessly explores a society largely unknown to his compatriots back home.”

Andrew Moravcsik, Foreign Affairs: “Europe’s Promise is a timely and provocative book . . . the “social capitalist” policies of European countries represent best practices in handling most of the challenges modern democracies face today.”